Friends witnessed how the relationship between Lee and George veered between ostentatious gestures of romance and base violence. Lee would take George to parties and openings – they were photographed together at the launch of the Burberry store in Bond Street on 7 September – he would send him 500 red roses, and on a whim he would organize a plane to take them to Paris for drinks, Spain for dinner and then Amsterdam for a night of clubbing. At the same time, ‘George was very badly beaten by Lee,’ said McQueen’s friend Chris Bird.60 ‘George and him used to fight a lot,’ said Janet Street-Porter.61 ‘People think he’s aggressive, but of course, the aggression comes from the vulnerability,’ said Elton John. ‘He does strike out, but that’s all about insecurity.’62 Detmar Blow remembers an awkward dinner at Nobu with Elton John and David Furnish, and Tim Burton and his then girlfriend Lisa Marie. ‘Elton sensed that he was familiar with McQueen’s demons and wanted to help,’ he said. ‘But McQueen was rude and churlish in response.’63
As George and Lee spent more time together, the younger man gradually became aware that his new ‘husband’ was a highly complex individual. ‘Everybody wanted to be with Lee,’ he said. ‘He was the hottest ticket in town. But I noticed that in the fashion world there were very few people who said, “There’s someone who needs looking after.”’64 George was also a little startled to discover that McQueen had an unusual fetish. ‘Lee used to like to have athlete’s foot and let it get into such a bad state that it became painful and very itchy,’ said Donald Urquhart. ‘He absolutely loved that sensation and enjoyed scratching between his toes, which George didn’t get at all.’65 George told Donald that Lee ‘almost got off on it, it was almost like a sexual pleasure’.66
McQueen explored the connections between pain and pleasure in his next show for his own label held on 26 September 2000 at the Gatliff Road bus depot. Voss was one of the highlights of McQueen’s career, not so much a fashion show as a fully formed art installation that interrogated attitudes towards beauty and ugliness, sex and death, sanity and madness. Backstage, however, the atmosphere was far from gloomy. Kate Moss, a little piqued by having her head swathed in muslin, took hold of a bandage and wrapped it around hair stylist Guido Palau. ‘He did not like a taste of his own medicine,’ she said. ‘There is a picture in the office at McQueen of me and Lee cackling, laughing our heads off because I got him [Guido] back.’67
Before the show started, the audience – which included some of the world’s most beautiful women, including Gwyneth Paltrow, as well as dozens of style and fashion critics – were forced to look at themselves for an hour, their images reflected from the surface of an enormous rectangular box on the stage that had been constructed from surveillance glass. Finally, with many people in the audience already feeling distinctly uncomfortable, the models started to emerge. With their heads bandaged as if they had just undergone a mass lobotomy (or facelift), the beautiful girls, unable to see out, paced up and down the catwalk, which was designed to look like a padded cell, and around a sinister darkened box that sat centre stage.
The outfits themselves were both stunningly beautiful and deeply unsettling. There was a dress made from blood-red glass medical slides. Another dress had been constructed from razor clam shells that Lee and George had found on a beach in Norfolk. There was a coat of purple and green silk woven with a thermal image of McQueen’s face on the back. A startling Japanese-inspired jacket and trousers were made from pink and grey bird’s-eye cloth and twinned with a hat the size of a small coffin embroidered with silk thread and real amaranth flowers. Finally there was an exquisite under-dress of oyster shells worn below a dress constructed from a nineteenth-century Japanese screen that Lee had found in the Clignancourt flea market in Paris and which had sat in his home until six months before the show. ‘The screen was so fragile that when we touched it, it crumbled,’ said Sarah Burton. ‘We fused it onto cotton so it wouldn’t fall apart, then lined it with silk so it would hold its shape. The whole thing was done by hand. It was too delicate to put on a machine. Alexander did most of it himself. He didn’t want any pleats or darts, he wanted it to be very flat, to show off the workmanship which is fantastic.’68
The beauty of the clothes, however, was immediately challenged by the final image. As the last model walked from the set, a light started to burn inside the mysterious dark glass box and heavy breathing emanated from the PA system. The sides of the box opened and smashed to the ground to reveal a fat, naked woman in breathing apparatus together with hundreds of moths fluttering in the air, a reworking of Joel-Peter Witkin’s 1983 photograph Sanitarium. ‘I am McQueen’s pulsing mirror, fashion’s greatest fear staring right back at them,’ wrote Michelle Olley, the model who McQueen asked to strip off and don a gas mask, in her diary at the time. ‘I am the death of fashion. The death of beauty.’69
The show represented McQueen’s ambivalent attitude towards the fashion industry: while he still had the ability to imagine and make clothes of heart-stopping beauty he felt there was something deeply toxic about the environment. The final image, as Michelle Olley recalls, was one that symbolized death. ‘Monsieur McQueen was cooking up a Big Momma Muerte finish,’ she wrote.70 ‘I can’t see myself staying in fashion,’ Lee told Nick Knight. ‘There is no substance to it any more. If you think about fashion through history, it was revolutionary. It’s not revolutionary now.’ Did he not view his own work as revolutionary? Knight had asked. ‘No, I’m bored of trying. Bored of being an anarchist . . . With these big companies, it gets to a point where it means nothing . . . If I were God, I would stop fashion for five years.’71
At this point, McQueen could have taken a step back and distanced himself from the unrelenting treadmill of producing collection after collection. His Givenchy contract was coming to an end in 2001; he said he didn’t want to pursue dreams of greater wealth or fame; he had fulfilled many of the ambitions that he had harboured as a young man. And yet, when Isabella Blow telephoned him to tell him that Tom Ford wanted to talk about the possibility of Gucci buying a stake in his business, he seized the opportunity. He could not blame Ford’s silken-tongued, Texan charm nor the suggestion, according to Isabella, that the creative director of Gucci found him attractive. After all, McQueen had started the process himself when he had introduced himself to Domenico De Sole in Monte Carlo. ‘I went for him [De Sole],’ he said. ‘Some sort of arrangement with Gucci was on my mind.’72 Perhaps his motive was revenge? ‘I really think the reason he sold his share in his company to the Gucci group was really to stick two big fucking fingers up to Bernard Arnault,’ said Chris Bird.73
After a number of telephone calls that stretched throughout the summer of 2000, McQueen and Ford finally set a date to meet at the Ivy restaurant. ‘Tom would say, “I’m going out to dinner with Alexander, and you can’t come come!”’ said Richard Buckley, Tom’s partner (now husband). ‘So I knew they were up to something.’ That October night at the Ivy, Lee and Tom sat and discussed their lives, everything apart from fashion. ‘We had Twiggy in front of us and Charles Saatchi behind us, and here we were, these two men sitting at this table, glowing,’ said McQueen. For his part Ford described McQueen as somewhat fierce-looking in photographs but a ‘marshmallow’ in person – ‘adorable, charming and kind’. The ‘poetic’ quality of McQueen’s work appealed to him. ‘He is a true artist, albeit an artist with a real commercial savvy,’ he said.74
McQueen, however, was far from malleable when it came to negotiations about how much he wanted for 51 per cent of his company – or, rather, the three companies that he had set up, Paintgate, Autumnpaper and Blueswan. Figures quoted in the press at the time ranged from £54 million to £80 million, something of an exaggeration according to John Banks, his accountant. He remembers the series of clandestine meetings that went on, often in a room at the back of Brown’s, in Mayfair. All business had to be done in an atmosphere of the utmost secrecy as ‘Gucci and Givenchy were at war’, he said. ‘There was no question when it came to the amount of
money Lee wanted; he had decided the figure. It was in the tens of millions of dollars, at the lower end. When we mentioned the amount I remember De Sole and James McArthur [then the Executive Vice President of Gucci Group] had a sharp intake of breath, but he got the money: it went from $20 million, $30 million, until eventually the number was achieved.’75
In addition to the money, De Sole and Ford guaranteed McQueen creative independence. What they expected in return was for him to transform himself into a brand. ‘The question I had to ask myself – because it’s my job – is does he really have the power and the talent to turn the Alexander McQueen label into a global brand?’ said De Sole at the time. ‘I think he does; otherwise I could not have done the deal, basically.’76
Gucci hoped to open ten flagship stores bearing McQueen’s name around the world, plus a range of perfumes, accessories and spin-off ranges. ‘He’ll soon have what we all want – a global empire,’ said Julien Macdonald, who took over from McQueen at Givenchy. ‘They will smarten his collar, straighten his tie and make his accessories conquer the world.’77
On Saturday 2 December, John Banks telephoned McQueen to congratulate him on the deal. Lee was in a car with a group of friends and John remembers hearing a great collective scream of joy coming down the line. ‘He was pretty deliriously happy,’ said John.78 Lee and George returned to the flat and celebrated by sharing a bag of crisps washed down by a couple of Bacardi Breezers.
When the news of the super-deal was announced on 4 December the press went into overdrive; the story even made it into the pages of the Sun. ‘McQueen move fuels fashion feud,’ read the headline in the Guardian. ‘Gucci embraces bad boy of style McQueen,’ said The Times. A comment writer for the Independent examined McQueen’s toxic time at Givenchy but hoped that the designer would be happier in his new role. ‘The partnership with Gucci will no doubt be full of sparks,’ it said, ‘but at least it will not be deadly.’79
Chapter Eleven
‘Lee was constantly searching for a state where he felt comfortable – peace was elusive’
Kerry Youmans
One day towards the end of December 2000, Lee and George were at home watching television. In the corner of the rented East End flat stood an enormous Christmas tree covered in hundreds of Swarovksi crystals taken from a £30,000 chandelier that McQueen had bought from the Four Seasons hotel in Paris, and subsequently dismantled. Lee was bored of watching nature programmes on television and that night, as they sat through another documentary, he turned to George and asked him if he wanted to go to Africa. Two days later, the two men sat on the upper deck of a plane bound for the continent – McQueen had booked the entire floor just for them. Just forty-eight hours after that the designer had had enough of the dry landscape and the hours spent waiting to catch a glimpse of a wild animal. He knew Naomi Campbell had a house on the coast and chartered a private plane to see her. ‘We spent three days partying and taking drugs there – it was New Year,’ said George. ‘Naomi didn’t do any coke even though she was surrounded by people who were.’1
The deal with Gucci turned McQueen into a man with serious money. George remembered flying with him to New York on a whim to buy a few pieces of modern art; in one afternoon McQueen spent £125,000 on a couple of Warhol prints, including one from the Diamond Dust Shoes series. ‘I just thought I wanted a bit of history,’ he said. ‘I was never a big fan of his. I only understood him when I read the diaries and then I felt like I could connect with him because the [fashion] industry is a pile of shit and he was very talented to recognize it before he died.’2
In June 2001, McQueen paid £1.3 million for 11 Aberdeen Park, Islington, which he bought from his friend, hair stylist Guido Palau. Then, later that year, he bought his parents the house worth £275,000 in Rowan Walk, Hornchurch, Essex. Initially, Ron and Joyce were reluctant to leave the family home in Biggerstaff Road, Stratford. Ron liked fishing in the nearby River Lea, and Joyce liked the shopping centre. ‘But after a couple of years they settled and realized they should have done it years before,’ said Janet McQueen.3
Lee was still unhappy with his appearance and asked Janet Street-Porter if he could have the number of her personal trainer. ‘He tried to work out with Lee but it was pointless,’ said Janet. ‘Lee was always coked out of his head or coming down from being coked out of his head, and doing loads of other drugs too. So my trainer said he couldn’t work with him in case he had an accident or a heart attack while they were working out.’4 Still desperate to lose weight, McQueen paid thousands of pounds to have a gastric band fitted, a device that limited the amount of food that he could eat. The results were dramatic and he lost two stone in the first three months. ‘He was trying to conform, live up to a celebrity status, and it just didn’t suit him,’ said Archie Reed.5 ‘I always thought he looked better with a bit of weight,’ said his brother Tony.6 But McQueen loved his new look – which he told journalists was a result of healthy eating and exercise, including yoga. ‘It’s more to do with wanting to look in the mirror and think, “God, I really fancy you,”’ he told Harriet Quick in Vogue. ‘I was in this club in London and I was wired, but I went to chat myself up in the mirror – it was so funny. I thought, “Oh, you’re quite cute!” And it was me. Finally, I got there!’7
By the time McQueen appeared at the Rover British Fashion Awards, on 20 February 2001 in Battersea Park, he had lost a great deal of the fat from around his middle; his face looked slimmer too. As he stepped up to receive the Designer of the Year award – he had beaten Julien Macdonald and Clements Ribeiro – McQueen seemed nervous and on edge; a pair of sunglasses that he refused to take off hid his shifty eyes. There was a reason why the designer felt so anxious: standing on the stage next to Condé Nast’s Nicholas Coleridge, Chairman of the British Fashion Council, was Prince Charles, the man whose suits McQueen had claimed he had secretly defaced all those years before. Although the encounter could have been an awkward one, Lee lightened the mood by joking about it. ‘It’s kind of uncanny because I started off by making his Highness’s suits at Anderson & Sheppard and now I’m getting an award from him,’ he said. ‘It’s kind of really freaky’ – at which point both the audience and the Prince laughed. In the accompanying film about McQueen’s work the designer talked about some of the pressures that he had experienced in the fashion industry, and how he had felt that he had needed to express this in his show Voss. ‘It’s like an animal in a testing lab, being looked at and prodded at, a bit like fashion really,’ he said. ‘Fashion is a small world, [there is] a sinister side to it, a lot of voyeurism. Sometimes fashion can get so suffocating. It’s a bit like a mental asylum sometimes.’
That night, at the awards, Lee criticized the lack of support that designers received and claimed that ‘if it wasn’t for Gucci I wouldn’t be carrying on today’,8 a point that he had already made on BBC2’s Newsnight a couple of days before. ‘One minute you are having a drink in 10 Downing Street, the next minute someone grabs you to have your photo taken with Cherie Blair,’ he had said. ‘She hadn’t said two words before she dragged me over for that picture. It’s all fine and well, but you have to put your money where your mouth is.’9
McQueen had had a particularly stressful start to 2001. He had hoped to work with Sam Taylor-Wood on an installation for the Givenchy couture show in January, but when LVMH heard about his deal with Gucci, it was reported, his bosses had pulled the plug on the project and, as a punishment of sorts, they had confined him to a ‘low-key, client-only showing in the Avenue George V salon’.10 Lee had also been hurt by some of the statements released by LVMH, particularly one announcement that outlined how, since the group had not backed his own company, it was ‘normal that Mr McQueen should seek financing for his tiny business’. According to journalist Christa D’Souza: ‘Of all the press McQueen received after the deal, it was the word “tiny” that most rankled.’11
It was no surprise that he entitled his next show for his own label What a Merry-Go-Round. The presentation,
which took place on 21 February 2001, blended the sinister aspects of childhood (references included the character of the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, ventriloquists’ dummies, models with faces made up like crazed clowns, creepy-looking dolls, the sound of children playing and an eight-horse carousel) with McQueen’s undisguised distaste for the fashion industry. At one point, as Krzysztof Komeda’s haunting lullaby from Rosemary’s Baby played over the PA system, a model with a three-pointed wig and a clown face hobbled across the stage with a gold skeleton clasped to the hem of her skirt. ‘We show children clowns as if they’re funny,’ he said after the show. ‘They’re not. They’re really scary. And the funfair was a metaphor for all that I’ve been through lately.’12 Although the show was well received – ‘the collection was a brilliantly balanced mix of masculine and feminine, ultra-romantic and brutally sharp,’ wrote Susannah Frankel13 – later McQueen said that he believed that the spectacle had stolen the show, and ‘nobody remembers the clothes’.14
Janet Street-Porter did not agree. Soon after the show, McQueen sent her a present of a long black leather coat with a train. The writer and broadcaster adored it, but wearing it did present her with several problems. ‘First of all it’s very long and has a train and you have to be careful not to fall over it and look like a drunk,’ she said. The second issue had more to do with the coat’s power to incite passions in those who came into contact with it. She remembers wearing it to an opening at the Tate and being followed around the gallery by a well-dressed, highly educated man in his early sixties. ‘He was an MP or a captain of industry wearing a very expensive suit,’ she said. ‘He came up to me and asked if he could have a word. “I’ll give you anything you want if you come round to my flat and stand there in that coat,” he said. I told him it wasn’t going to happen. I also wore it to a wedding in Oxfordshire. I remember going round to a friend’s house beforehand and she said, “Fucking hell, are you wearing that coat?” I said that I was and she said, “Well, I’m not coming, I can’t compete.” That coat had a big effect on people, his best clothes were like that.’15
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